WPRS-AM is dropping news/talk and switching to Country music. The station is located in Paris Illinois, a small town across the border from Terra Haute Indiana. The station was carrying Stephan, Ramsey, Rush, Hannity, Levin, Ingraham and Coast to Coast. They carried Glenn Beck only on the weekends. They did not do Internet streaming.
This is starting to become a trend – AM radio stations dropping Conservative talk for Music. My conspiratorial mind starts to suspect an invisible hand at work… Or maybe the Beck boycott is spreading to the local level… Or maybe station owners who are not happy with Conservative talk finally are choosing their principles over making money. It seems unlikely it is motivated by ratings.
Thoughts?
Isn’t it more expensive to play music than it is to broadcast the shows?
Depends on the show. There’s a lot of syndicated fare that can be had for dirt-cheap, but top line stuff like Rush is almost as expensive– if not moreso– than a local talk show host, and those are far more expensive than license fees.
I’ve been seeing this quite a bit. Two of the stations within a 100-mile radius of me (WKSN Jamestown, WJET Erie) dropped Rush Limbaugh in the past couple of years. In both cases, the cited reason is that rights fees were getting too high– interestingly enough, right after Rush signed that big contract, too. Basically Clear Channel started passing on the costs of Rush’s contract to his affiliates. Thus, local stations are acting by the rules of the market– if you’re going to charge that much, then forget it. We won’t pay. We can just as easily do music. Remember, most small markets aren’t monitored by Arbitron and are able to set their own ad rates. I will agree that this is starting to be a trend.
If your station runs on syndicated talk, they’d better have Rush, or else you will be permanently branded as second tier (i.e. leftovers, and resulting in no listeners). So, you have three options: go to an adult standards, oldies or country format, with licensing being the primary cost… invest heavily in local talk… or the middle option, go full-service with local talk and music, which is quite popular in rural areas.
I don’t think there is an agenda or an “invisible hand” here. Just the market at work.
See: Adam Smith
the only question for me would be why is any AM station going to music?
A well-run local music station has very loyal listeners, who generally are more responsive to advertisers. Not so much for a station that mostly parrots Doug Stephan, Dave Ramsey, Laura Ingraham and Coast to Coast.